NMH Magazine 2011 Spring by Northfield Mount Hermon

Northfield Mount Hermon

NMH

Magazine

11 spring /su mmer 2011 alu mni magazine , volume 13, number 1

SCIENCE STORIES THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY

D E P A R T M E N T S

2 Letters 3 From the Archives 4 Campus News 38 Alumni News 45 Class Notes 96 Parting Words

NMH Magazine

F E A T U R E S

Science Stories The Spirit of Inquiry

The Neutral Scientist

Beer Geek

Pressing Matters

Public Health = Public Good

Amy Wong ’70

Jason Perkins ’93

Matt Albee ’87

Ed Brink ’56

The Horse’s Mouth

Doctor, Teacher, Healer

Asking Questions, Treating Patients

Caroline Neiderman ’78

Angela Lambert ’83

Mychelle Farmer ’71

In the Land of the Kiwi

Students got a close-up look at Maori environmental restoration efforts during NMH’s annual study-abroad trip to New Zealand in February and March. Saskia Giramma ’11, Drew Palmer ’12, Kyra White ’12 (in helicopter) and seven other students and three teachers journeyed to Rarotoka Island off the South coast, where they saw yelloweyed penguins and learned about the island’s biodiversity from Stewart Bull, an elder of the Ngai Tahu tribe. Story, p. 35.

Analog Man

Scientific Methods

Bob Pease ’57

On the cover: Illustration by Harry van Baaren

NMH Magazine Spring/Summer 2011 Volume 13, Number 1 Editor Heather R. Sullivan Director of Communications and Marketing Associate Editor Sharon LaBella-Lindale

Letters

Alumni News and Campus News Editor Jennifer Sutton P ’14 Class Notes Editor Sally Atwood Hamilton ’65

Middle East Map

Summer Session Reunion?

Contributors Megan Buchanan Cherry ’91 Sally Atwood Hamilton ’65 Rachael Hanley ’98 Karen Lange ’80 Jessica Lindsey Mary Seymour Jennifer Sutton P ’14

I received the latest NMH Magazine earlier this week. On the last page, with the essay by Ted Thornton, the map of the Middle East neglected to show Israel as a country. In lieu of Israel, it showed Palestine. Am I correct to assume that this was a mere editing error and not a map submitted by Ted or another faculty member?

Archivist Peter Weis ’78, P ’13

jordan desnick ’07 jdesnick@gmail.com

Design Bidwell ID

Correction

The NMH Magazine vividly captures the essence of what the school has represented in the past and, going forward, the values it teaches and inculcates. I noted the article about the 50th Anniversary of the summer session. I was part of that first group as well as the class of 1963. It was an incredibly wonderful experience. I’ve often wondered why there has never been a reunion or some sort of outreach to what is now a large number of people.

Class Notes Design HvB Imaging Photographers Michael Dwyer Sharon LaBella-Lindale Glenn Minshall P ’96 Risley Sports Photography David Warren Chief Advancement Officer Allyson L. Goodwin ’83 P ’12, ’14

You are correct that the map accompanying “Parting Words,” on page 96 of the Fall/Winter 2010 magazine, inaccurately represented the Middle East. Faculty member Ted Thornton, who wrote the piece, did not submit the map that was printed and was not involved in the magazine design process. The magazine staff regrets the inclusion of the flawed illustration, and apologizes for this unintentional error. Please find the corrected piece and Thorton’s bio at www.nmhschool.org/nmh-magazine.

lawrence h. bernstein, m.d. ’63 larryber@comcast.net

Read it Online We like the digital magazine. Please keep it up and cancel our paper version—save $ and trees.

paul ’78 and edna ’78 montague

Editors’ Note: Read the digital version of NMH Magazine at http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/5c3302e7#.

Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant P ’12, ’14 Northfield Mount Hermon publishes NMH Magazine (USPS074-860) two times a year in fall/winter and spring/summer. Printed by Lane Press, Burlington, VT 05402. NMH Magazine Northfield Mount Hermon One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3978 Fax 413-498-3021 slindale@nmhschool.org Class Notes nmhnotes@nmhschool.org Address Changes Advancement Services Northfield Mount Hermon One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3300 addressupdates@nmhschool.org

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From the Archives

1940s

1980s

1960s

1990s

Science classes through the decades

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Photograph courtesy of Robert Macomber

Campus News

Into the Woods A Q & A WITH ROBERT C. MACOMBER ’60 IN 2008, NMH COMMISSIONED LandVest Inc., Timberland Division, to assess and appraise approximately 3,000 acres of forest land it owns in Northfield and Mount Hermon. The school then developed a long-term (15-year) forest management plan, and in 2009, added the land, valued at $5 million, to the endowment. The goal: to preserve the forests and provide a modest, continuing income from periodic, conservatively managed timber harvests. Robert Macomber, a former NMH trustee, acts as a liaison between NMH, LandVest, and the school’s licensed, independent forester. 4

NMH Magazine

Describe NMH’s forest land. The forests are primarily hemlock, oak, and pine, with some maple, birch, and ash. It is a “second growth” forest—it grew back naturally after having been cleared and used for farmland during the 19th century. Over the years, the forests have been relatively unmanaged, though NMH has done well maintaining the character of the land and preserving the watershed around the reservoir in Northfield and the water supplies at Mount Hermon. Why does NMH need a forestry management plan? First, for managing the land, which includes the periodic cutting and thinning of trees, the identification and marking of hiking trails and other recreational areas, the protection of the soil and water quality, and the management of invasive insects and plant pests. Second, the school’s endowment gains a modest revenue stream from this renewable resource. We anticipate that after the initial 15-year cutting and regrowing activities are complete, the economic content of NMH’s forests would be about double what it is today.

Third, there is an opportunity for managing tax costs. Massachusetts has a program (Chapter 61) that substantially reduces the property tax burden on qualifying forest and agricultural land. NMH is enrolling its forests, section by section, in this program. The school is taking the extra step of applying for “green certification” through a third-party evaluation program offered by the state. This ensures that NMH is following the highest standards. What does the plan call for? It lays out, year by year, the size and character of the cut. It calls for heavier cutting in the first three to five years, since there is catch-up to be done in terms of balancing the forest growth, repairing access roads, and dealing with pests. Harvesting forest products (timber, firewood, pulpwood, and chipwood) will accomplish most of these objectives. Each harvest requires permits issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which are also filed with the respective town. How does the process work? The forester develops a cutting plan for a section of woods, including access and staging points, and then marks, tree by tree, what is to be cut and what he does not want cut. He will do one parcel—between 10 and 150 acres—at a time. Then loggers walk the cutting area with the forester and prepare proposals. NMH selects a proposal and sells to the logger the right to enter the land and cut the timber, supervised by the forester. The logger takes on the risk of selling the timber. How does the forester decide what gets cut? Partly it depends on the timber content of the land and what the timber markets are. Sometimes there is demand for chips, or firewood, or building lumber, or furniture lumber. It is also a process of thinning, clearing, and regrowth. The forester might mark the scrubby stuff for chipwood and some tall trees for lumber, allowing small- and medium-sized trees room to grow. Three to 10 years later, he’ll thin some of those, and the cycle continues. At the end of 15 years, NMH should have a more balanced forest, and a continuing supply of marketable timber. How does NMH’s timber harvesting affect animals living in the forest, and the soil? In my view, a DCR (Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation)-approved forest management plan calls for three things: the orderly and careful management of harvests, the preservation of land, and the preservation of habitat. The forester often leaves dead trees standing because they provide animal habitat. The logging is often carried out during the winter months to minimize the impact on the soil. And when a tree is cut, it is also debranched, and a lot of the branches are left behind on purpose. They hold the soil in place and when they decay, they feed the new growth and provide wildlife with places and materials for nesting.

Light from the Sea LIGHT FROM THE DEPTHS of the sea can help track pollution, according to biologist and deep-sea explorer Dr. Edith Widder, who cofounded the Ocean Research & Conservation Association (ORCA). Widder spoke about bioluminescence (the light chemically produced by various ocean organisms) when she visited Northfield Mount Hermon April 26 and 27. “It is a little-appreciated fact that most of the animals in the ocean make light,” Widder says, describing her work in advance of the lecture. “They use the light to help them find food, attract mates, and defend themselves from predators. And now we are using their light to help protect the ocean by making pollution visible.” Widder’s visit was part of the school’s Science in the 21st Century speaker series. She also spoke with students and faculty at an all-school meeting about the effects of the BP oil spill on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. Widder serves as CEO, president, and senior scientist at ORCA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of marine ecosystems since 2005. Her technological inventions include an ultrasensitive light meter called LoLAR, and ORCA’s Eye-in-theSea (EITS), a deep-sea camera system. Scientists have used EITS to observe rare sharks and to discover a new species of large squid. Widder’s work has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s “Midwater Mysteries” and on PBS’s “NOVA ScienceNOW.” In September 2006, Widder was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her work with ORCA.

A deep-sea shrimp spews luminescent chemicals out of its mouth at a viperfish. The light serves to blind or distract predators. Photo by Edith Widder.

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Thinking about Race “I LIKE TO THINK that, in front of me, there are hundreds and hundreds of Dr. Kings being formed,” Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant said during an all-school meeting in January that kicked off NMH’s weeklong commemoration of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work. “Dr. King is not here today, so it is up to us—you here in this room, me, everyone we know—to take up the work of social justice and to address both the suffering and the systems that cause it.” The week was full of memorable moments. • In her Moment of Silence speech, Yasmin James ’12 recalled the moment when her then 4-year-old sister had approached a white girl at a park and was rebuffed because of the color of her skin. “I wasn’t that old, but I recognized and could identify racism,” James said. “I represent an entire generation of people just like you, who have the power and potential to end racism. We also have in us the strength to fight for what is right.” • Adam Mazo, executive producer and director of the documentary film Coexist, presented a Wantman Family State of the World lecture about his investigation of the Rwandan reconciliation efforts. Mazo also screened his film about the country’s peace process and the challenges Rwandans have faced following the 1994 genocide. • Ernest Green was the featured speaker of the week, sponsored by the Smethurst Speaker Series Fund. Green was one of nine black students who integrated the all-white Central

High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students, who became known as the “Little Rock Nine,” faced threats and intimidation but continued to insist on their right to go to school. Green was the first of the group to earn his diploma from Central High, in a ceremony attended by Dr. King. “When I walked across the stage, no one clapped,” Green said. “But, you know, I felt good anyway. I had cracked the wall and others would come through it.” • The Brothers, an NMH group that supports young men of color at the school, led a workshop on “Race in the Media,” examining media portrayals of race and how they affect broader societal views of racial issues. The Brothers showed clips from recent television shows and films and guided a discussion. • NMH traditionally hosts a comedian to conclude the MLK celebration week. This year, Jordan Carlos, a Brooklyn-based comic who has been featured on Comedy Central and the “Colbert Report” and who calls himself a “preppy black guy,” made his first appearance at a boarding school. Carlos also met with students after the show.

IN THE GALLERY The annual Student Art Show filled the gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center from March 24 to April 20. More than 40 students in the visual arts program contributed works in ceramics, painting, photography, design, drawing, and digital media, including this image from AP Design student Tong Liu ’11. The gallery’s final exhibit of 2010–2011 is “The Shared Image,” paintings and sculpture by Carol ’61 and Tom Odell, from May 1 to June 12.

NMH Magazine

They Shoot, They Score Jeff Liu ’11, Yifei Gao ’13, and Kelsey Deng ’11, all members of NMH’s new Robotics Club, troubleshoot the mechanics of two soccerbots they helped build. The bots and their handlers—a dozen club members— won first place at a regional RoboCupJunior competition in New Jersey in April. They also won first place in a separate “Rescue” event.

Politics Up Close A version of this story originally appeared in a January edition of The Bridge, one of NMH’s student publications. It was reported and written by Kelsey Savoy ’13. AT THE END OF JANUARY, David Chardack ’12 reported for work in Washington, D.C., where he would serve as a page in the United States Senate for the spring session of Congress. He worked for Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah, where Chardack lives. According to Chardack, who spoke with The Bridge before leaving for Washington, his duties as a Senate page would entail a lot of messenger work: making photocopies and taking documents back and forth between senatorial offices. “The work itself I don’t expect to be the highlight of my time in Washington,” he said. “It is mostly the environment I will be working in that will be exciting.” Chardack submitted an application to become a Senate page over a year ago, in October 2009. He sent updates every few months. Mostly, he just waited. He

said that after applications are submitted, decisions are made right before the page is needed in Washington; he was notified of his acceptance in mid-December for a position that would begin in January. This left him only a few days to make the decision. As a new junior last fall, Chardack started off with only four semesters at NMH, and it was difficult to choose to cut that time down to three semesters. But “there was no way I could turn a pageship down,” he said. Chardack’s daily life as a Senate page included classes from approximately 6 to 9:30 am. Pages must arrive at the Capitol by 10 to help set up the Senate floor by 11; they then work as long as the senators work. Chardack expected that his workdays could end any time between 4 and 11 pm. Homework assignments and even classes get postponed or canceled if work on the Senate floor runs late. Chardack described Orrin Hatch, who sponsors several pages every year, as “one of the more eminent politicians in Utah, and one of the highest-ranked

senators in Washington.” During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Hatch was considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 2000, he made a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, which he lost to George W. Bush. Politics has always fascinated Chardack, and although he does not see himself running for public office, he was “very excited to have even such a small part in it today,” he said. “As much as I am sad not to be at NMH right now, I know that once I get to Washington, I will have made the right choice.”

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“A Great Honor.” That’s what Ron Smith, director of NMH’s band and jazz programs, called it. Sixty-six NMH musicians, under the direction of faculty members Smith, Steven Bathory-Peeler, and Sheila Heffernon, celebrated Christmas at the WHITE HOUSE in December when they performed in the Grand Foyer during an annual holiday open house. Five student ensembles took the stage before 1,000 guests, in an appearance arranged by Ethan Yake ’97, deputy director of the White House Visitor Center. Photography by Brooks Kraft ’82.

NMH Magazine

Season Records

Skyscrapers in the Sand In January, six NMH students traveled to Qatar (with faculty members Lorrie Byrom and Nate Hemphill) to participate in a Model United Nations conference hosted by Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. They discussed global issues with students from around the world, and also toured the capital city of Doha and took rides on a camel. They shared a few written reflections. At first glance, Qatar’s vast desert makes the country feel empty, without a culture or economy. But the oil under the sand has transformed the country into a thriving economic powerhouse and a cultural melting pot. Only a fraction of the population is Qatari, so the nation is literally a collage of culture. —MATT TONKINSON ’12

Everything in Qatar is glittering with energy and wealth, yet it’s a smattering of new and old. Luminous skyscrapers hang like magical orbs over ancient fishing harbors lined with little sailboats. Sparkling turquoise waters reflect off of the walls of the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art. Wealthy businesspeople wear kaffiyehs and hijabs as they talk on BlackBerries and park their BMWs. —JOHN FOLEY ’11

Instead of portraying itself as deeply connected to Islamic culture, Qatar seems to be leaning toward Western thought. Rather than retain its 6,000 years of history, the country focuses on expanding its cities and business operations. What struck me most is how the major financial districts and suburbs are practically all empty. It seems like Qatar is growing physically much faster than its population.

I learned to appreciate the beauty of Arabic, especially at the Museum of Islamic Art—the beautiful patterns, artwork, and jewelry of the Arab culture. —JUDY CHOI ’12

The conference was challenging and competitive; it pushed us to think on our feet and make decisions. I was the only American in my committee, which was different because I haven’t spent much time in my life being in the minority. Most of the other delegates went to American or international schools in Ethiopia, Prague, Warsaw, Geneva, South Africa, Palestine, Zambia, and Myanmar. Many of them have lived in multiple countries for short periods of time and were confused by the concepts of having a constant home and having friends for more than 10 years. —DEENIE SCHLASS ’11

—PERRY SAVAS ’11

Our drive to the desert was frightening, but our fear was substantially outweighed by the excitement and thrill of tumbling across cascading sand and by the prospect of riding camels! Later that night we walked across the tops of the dunes, surrounded by darkness and stars. We curled up in our tents and slept to the sound of wind and sand.

The name “Model United Nations” might make the trip seem like kids came together to “pretend” being the U.N., but it is much more than this. People from literally every corner of the world were discussing important ideas. Sure, we aren’t changing the world with our resolutions at the conference, but we are preparing to do so in the future. —MATT TONKINSON ’12

—NOON LADD ’11

Photographs by Deenie Schlass ’11

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Posted @NMH facebook.com/NMHschool

NMH The magazine has a new digital edition (you can even flip the pages).

Alexander Frank Ives ’67 When the Spade Oration photo began speaking and moving, I recalled Harry Potter movies. Beautiful rendition!

NMH Anthony Rizzuto ’96 (and dad Hugo) competes on NBC’s “Minute to Win It” tonight at 8 pm. Good luck, guys!

Dorothy Sypher Reid I remember Anthony when he was an energetic tour guide on the Northfield campus. Looks like he hasn’t changed!

NMH What is Founder’s Day all about? NMH students and faculty offered their views on the man who started it all.

Bev Knoll Tosi ’69 Do students still rub DL’s nose for good luck? @NMHschool @NMHHoggers @Arts_at_NMH

Will Perez ’04 Thank you @NMHSchool for inviting me to give the State of the World Address—can’t wait to be back #politics #haiti #poverty #publichealth

Kelli King-Jackson ’93 “History in the making.” Great @NMHSchool presentation by Ted Thornton about the Middle East. #Houston

Fahad Al-Sharekh ’92 My dorm TRON still Rocks! RT @NMHSchool: Congratulations to Tron and C5 for taking first place in dorm basketball intramurals! vimeo.com/channels/nmhschool

NMH Performing Arts Upcoming Student Performances

Jim Edelhauser ’87 I’m feeling some fairly intense jealousy here. I wish we had these resources available when I was at Northfield. It’s quite inspiring!

NMH Magazine

On the Court WHEN RUTHANN ZIENTEK ’14 dribbles on the court, she scrunches up her face and watches the ball intensely. At the start of the winter season, Coach Nicole Hager thought she wasn’t having any fun. But Zientek explained that it’s the “game face” she puts on when she’s serious on the court. And Zientek’s dedication is paying off. One of two freshmen on the varsity basketball team, Zientek kept up with her older teammates, ending the season as the team’s top scorer, with 295 points. Her total surpassed other top scorers by more than 100 points. Hager says if Zientek continues scoring at this rate, she could be NMH’s first female basketball player to score 1,000 points before she graduates. “That would be really amazing,” Zientek says. “But when I’m on the court it’s just about the game, and I don’t really think about reaching that goal.” Zientek was also the only NMH player invited to play in the All-Star Class A game, which was held at Loomis Chaffee in March. Among the 40 teams represented, Zientek was one of only two freshmen. “Ruthann is a great athlete and a true basketball player,” says Hager. “She has tremendous talent, a fabulous work ethic, and her teammates adore her.” Zientek came to NMH from Holmdel, New Jersey, where basketball was a big part of her life. It was watching one of her older brother’s games that made her want to get out on the court. During her middle school years, she played on four different teams: for her church, school, town, and an AAU team. “She has seen more court time as a young person than most of my team combined,” says Hager. Zientek is modest about her accomplishments. She doesn’t see herself standing out from the other players. Instead, she says her team is what makes basketball fun for her. “I love my teammates so much,” she says. “They are pretty much my family.”

Feeding Neighbors THE REFRIGERATOR IN HOLBROOK HALL filled up with food, a table in the hall held freshly baked brownies and cookies, and good smells drifted through the building. NMH faculty and staff were providing a meal for their neighbors, just as they do several times a year. In the fall, winter, and spring, the NMH community prepares and serves dinner for the Franklin County Community Meals Program, a nonprofit with locations in Turners Falls, Greenfield, and Orange, Massachusetts. Up to 100 people attend any given meal, says NMH Chaplain Michael Corrigan, who works with other NMH faculty and staff to coordinate the program. “I think it’s great any time we do something that’s not in any way about us, but about reaching out to someone

else,” Corrigan says. “These events are hopefully making people think about something beyond the community here and their own personal needs.” Cooking and serving food is not the only way in which the NMH community strives to help out. A donation effort during Christmas Vespers raised $3,500 to be split among Franklin County Community Meals, the Greenfield Survival Center, and Greenfield Family Inn, a local shelter. A Christmas Eve service raised an additional $300 for the Community Action Resource Center of Franklin County. And during Family Days

To the Top THE NIGHT BEFORE the National Prep Wrestling Tournament at Lehigh University, Coach Rob Buyea gathered members of his wrestling team in a hotel room and told them he would never take a better group to nationals. They already had had great success, he said. This was a group that could do something special. “The feeling and tone in the room was so intense, it just went silent for a minute,” Buyea recalls. “It really hit home and it gave me the chills. At that point, I really felt like we were going to pull off a win.”

in February, art teacher Atta Kurzman raised $320 for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts (earmarked for Franklin County Community Meals) by selling bowls made by students and parents in the ceramics studio.

The next morning, the boys varsity team didn’t just pin their opponents on the mat; they pinned down two individual national championship wins and placed fifth as a team—the first team from New England to ever crack the top five. “It’s been hard to believe,” Buyea says. “We set new records every single weekend in the last three weeks [leading up to the national tournament]. This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often.” The team also brought home four All-Americans—Geoff Verallis ’13 (119 lbs.), Ryan Ponte ’11 (135 lbs.), PG Marcus Cain ’11 (152 lbs.), and Nick Kidd ’11 (189 lbs.)—tying a school record. Cain was also named NMH’s first national champion since 1968, only the second wrestler to earn the title in NMH history. Kidd brought home the team’s second national champion title after wrestling a perfect season. “My proudest moment this season was when my wrestling partner, Nick Kidd, won his national champion title,” says Jordan Anderson ’11 (heavyweight). “We’ve all worked really hard and it’s paid off.” At the same time, Anderson says, it was Buyea who inspired the team. The coach set challenging goals, made sure his team traveled outside of New England, and always had a positive attitude. “One of my favorite things about wrestling is Rob on the sidelines because he gets so cranked up,” says Anderson. “They put out chairs for all the wrestling coaches, but Rob is barely in his. He’s usually on the sidelines pretending to wrestle along with us. His excitement is contagious.”

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Making Music in Big Places That’s what T. Jordan Short ’12 (right) and Martin Jaffe ’12 (left) did during the spring semester. Short, a trumpet player, was nominated to audition for the American High School Honors Performance Series, a program that showcases the country’s most talented high school musicians. Short was accepted, and he performed with the Honors Band in Carnegie Hall on February 19. A few weeks later, on March 5, he and Jaffe and the NMH Stage Combo competed in the National Berklee College of Music High School Jazz Festival in Boston. NMH placed fifth out of 12 combos in its division, and Jaffe, a bassist, received a “Superior Musician” award. He also was selected to perform with the All Eastern Jazz ensemble in Baltimore in March.

Summer Session

Earn credits to advance in school. Build skills and accelerate academic progress. Sample boarding school life or come as a day student. For day students, tuition is low and schedules are flexible.

2011

COLLEGE PREP For students entering grades 10–12. For credit or enrichment. Courses include US History, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Precalculus, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Writing, AP Economics, and others. MIDDLE SCHOOL PROGRAM For students entering grades 7–9. Courses include Writing, Pre algebra, Field Biology, Geography, Spanish, French, and others. ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE For students entering grades 7–12. Levels from beginning to advanced. Practice in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. CONTEMPORARY DANCE For students entering grades 7–12. Open to all levels. An opportunity for focused study in modern, jazz, and ballet forms. NEW ZEALAND SUMMER ABROAD For students entering grades 10–12. Students spend four weeks in New Zealand studying its history and culture and experiencing the country’s spectacular scenery by way of day hikes, bicycle rides, and kayak expeditions.

Northfield Mount Hermon Summer Session One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3290 summer_school@nmhschool.org

www.nmhschool.org/summer

NMH Magazine

NMH Farm Products

What: Hot Stove League Who: Dick Peller, math department chair Why: He loves baseball DICK PELLER IS ONCE AGAIN happily ensconced in his Red Sox routine, but that long, desolate stretch between the end of the World Series and the start of spring training is tough. To combat winter baseball blues on campus, Peller, in 2004, launched the NMH Hot Stove League, a modern version of an old-time scene: men gathered around a wood stove, smoking cigars and pipes and talking baseball. (“Modern” means no smoking or gender exclusion.) Each January, Peller invites a handful of baseball insiders and alumni who have gone on to careers in the sport—players, a scout, an ESPN journalist—to visit campus for a question-and-answer session with faculty, staff, and students about the upcoming season. They talk trades, steroids, Hall of Fame selections— anything goes. In a way, it’s a public service. “If you’re a real fan, there are basically two seasons: baseball season and waiting for baseball season,” Peller says. “The Hot Stove League helps bridge the gap.”

Honoring David Rowland NMH’S 80-SEAT BLACK BOX THEATER will soon have a new name. Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant announced in late March that, in recognition of the dedicated teacher and director who has influenced hundreds of students over more than three decades at NMH, the theater will be named after David Rowland. A group of alumni and parents, led by Laura Linney ’82, a former student of David’s, and Janet and John Irving P ’10, ’83, initiated the plan, to name the theater in Rowland’s honor. They have raised nearly half of the necessary funds, thanks to additional donors and support from the NMH advancement office. They expect to complete the fundraising and hold a dedication ceremony in Fall 2011. For more information, contact Susan Mattei P ’10, director of individual giving, at 413-498-3693 or smattei@nmhschool.org.

ORDER FORM Download an order form at nmhschool.org/ nmh-farm-products or return a copy of this order form, along with a check payable to Northfield Mount Hermon, to: Richard Odman, Farm Program Director, NMH, One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354. Please attach mailing instructions to your order. All prices include shipping. Please note: The minimum order for each mailing address is $25.

Name Address City State Telephone

Zip

❑ day ❑ evening

MAPLE PRODUCTS

QUANTITY

Pint syrup (Grade A) $18.00 Quart syrup (Grade A) $26.00 Half gallon syrup (Grade A) $42.00 Pure maple sugar candy $3.50 One box contains two 1-oz. maple leaves

Maple cream 8-oz. jar

$9.00

FRUIT & FLOWER PRODUCTS

Cider syrup 12-oz. jar Raspberry jam 12-oz. jar Lavender oil blended with almond oil 1.3 oz. Lavender soap Rosemary soap Lavender body scrub TOTAL

$15.00 $12.00 $10.00

$6.50 $6.50 $25.00 Spring/Summer | 11 13

S Science

SCIENCE STORIES THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY Northfield Mount Hermon’s educational mission rings especially true when it comes to the sciences, where knowledge gains meaning when

15 The Neutral Scientist

it is put into practice outside the textbook and beyond the classroom.

18 Beer Geek 20 Pressing Matters 22 Public Health = Public Good 24 The Horse’s Mouth 26 Doctor, Teacher, Healer 27 A sking Questions, Treating Patients 28 Analog Man 30 Scientific Methods

Here on campus, students are designing research projects that allow them to put their hands in the ground, or on a cow’s back, or into a box of building materials that will become a robot that can play soccer. NMH alumni have used their science-based skills to help wipe out smallpox, to build analog circuits that monitor earthquakes on the moon, to make beers and wines that taste good. In doing so, they ask questions, which is the foundation of science education. Mychelle Farmer ’71 (featured on page 27), a pediatrician who developed HIV education and treatment programs in Haiti, says she learned that “spirit of inquiry” at NMH. She considers it a vital part of being a good doctor. We say: a good citizen, too. “What problems can we solve?” Farmer asks. “How can we help?”

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F Forensics

Amy Wong ’70

THE NEUTRAL SCIENTIST

In March 1990, the body of a 23-yearold woman was found in an unused Metro stairway along a Rosslyn, Virginia, bike path, naked from the waist down. The woman, who had recently graduated from Tufts University, had been on her way to take the Metro to a party celebrating her own birthday. Someone

attacked her en route and dragged her to the stairway. They raped her and stabbed her 21 times. The crime shocked the community and received heavy coverage in the Washington, D.C., media. Amy Wong ’70 and others working at the Northern Laboratory of the Virginia Department

By Karen Lange ’80

of Forensic Science pored over evidence from the scene. It was confusing. The stairway was frequented by homeless men who had left behind many traces of themselves, obscuring the forensic record of the killer. The victim was white. Her killer, according to hairs recovered from her

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body, was of African ancestry. Police began to collect blood samples from African American men they encountered in the area, an approach that was not only questionable on civil liberties grounds but also unlikely to lead anywhere. “I was getting a zillion blood samples from these nice black men,” Wong says. Then police caught a man trying to attack women with a knife along another Arlington, Virginia, trail. The suspect, a 22-year-old furniture mover who lived in Southeast D.C., had an exceedingly rare enzyme that was found in body fluids gathered at the murder scene: PGM, or phosphoglucose mutase. Wong discovered the link, then checked it through analysis of the suspect’s DNA. There, too, was a match, making it very likely that this was the killer. Later, when he was convicted of rape and murder, it was largely based on this forensic evidence. Wong had helped solve one of Virginia’s highest-profile criminal cases with techniques that were cutting-edge at the time and have since been glamorized by the television show “C.S.I.” She would go on to head the Northern Laboratory, one of the nation’s leaders in forensic science, placing herself at the center of a revolution that has seen the introduction of highly precise DNA analysis and the collection of blood samples from an expanding range of people. At first, blood samples were taken from adults convicted of felonies. Then, in Virginia and other places, police started collecting them from juveniles. And then from people who had been arrested. The idea—still controversial because of civil liberties concerns—is to build databases that will help to solve serious crimes such as rapes and homicides, and also, Wong says, get

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convictions for lesser offenses such other forensic scientists focus on the as burglaries and malicious assaults. tests they’re performing and the staCatching people who commit these tistics their lab work produces. This crimes will prevent them from moving requires a strange but necessary disconon to bigger offenses. nect. “You form these calluses that Forensic scientists are also going back “ YOU’D BETTER BE DAMN to cold cases and SURE YOU’RE RIGHT. YOU closed cases in which questions remain, to CAN’T REALLY AFFORD TO subject evidence to BE WRONG.” DNA analysis, which requires only small samples and can be done years after the I’m really not proud of,” she says. fact. Forensic scientists can use bits of “I don’t even feel sorry for the usual evidence that formerly seemed useless: a adult victims. I say, ‘At least they cigarette, the saliva residue on an enveweren’t tortured.’ It’s really terrible, lope, the dried sweat on the handle of but it’s one way we protect ourselves.” a gun. “It’s a very exciting time,” Wong Wong wasn’t always so tough. says. “We’re learning now that you don’t During her freshman year at Northfield, throw anything away.” she cried frequently. The daughter of DNA analysis techniques have first-generation Chinese immigrants, become increasingly reliable; they she was so unfamiliar with American regularly provide evidence that sways food that she lost many pounds before juries. Before, a match with other she started eating what was served in genetic markers—say, blood type or the dining room. She thought she had an enzyme—might have established a been sent to Northfield as punishment general likelihood that a suspect had for rebelling when her mother wanted committed a crime, because only one to add Chinese lessons to piano lessons in 100 or in 1,000 people had that trait. and ballet, when Wong just wanted to Current DNA analysis strengthens those play with the other kids in the street. likelihoods. Often, Wong says, “We can And she struggled academically, too. bring it down to one of the world’s After being one of the best students at population—one in 6 billion. Which a Catholic parochial school in Corona, is pretty much saying, ‘It’s you.’” Queens, where the nuns focused on the Because it can be used even with memorization of facts but not on crititiny samples, DNA analysis has also cal thinking, Wong initially floundered made possible the prosecution of susat Northfield. pects in some of the saddest and most NMH trustee Carol Ramsey ’70, disturbing crimes, Wong says. “When who met Wong in 1966, remembers a you open the evidence, and you’re look- tiny girl with thick glasses and a pageing at a diaper, or you’re looking at boy haircut. “She was very unhappy. children’s clothes, the innocence of the Everything was strange to her.” But victim speaks for itself.” Wong got exposed to all sorts of ideas, Sometimes it’s impossible not to developed study skills, and learned identify with the victims, yet Wong how to ask questions. She became a tries to maintain neutrality. She and great arguer, Ramsey says. They had

a lot to discuss, since Ramsey was from Alabama and Wong was from New York, and the times—the late 1960s—encouraged a frank exchange of views. “There was a fearlessness about exploring differences,” Ramsey says. “We’d go to class arguing. We’d come out and keep arguing. If I had any indication of the Amy of the future, it was that kind of tenacity.” After Wong graduated from Drew University, she moved to Washington, D.C., hoping for a federal job. A hiring freeze made that impossible, so she went to work at a nursery, then at an accounting firm. She wasn’t living up to her mother’s expectations, but she was earning enough to rent a tiny apartment on K Street. One day she was on the campus of George Washington University to pick up a catalog for an accounting course. As she locked her bike to

a parking meter, she looked up and saw the name on the building in front of her: “Forensic Science.” Wong had long considered herself a math-science person, but she had no idea what the word “forensic” meant. Her interest was piqued. She entered the building, immediately met the professor who would become her mentor, and stumbled into one of the first and what would become one of the best departments of forensic science in the country. Wong’s first job out of graduate school took her to California, where she worked for the Ventura County sheriff ’s office. She returned east to take courses offered by the F.B.I., then landed a job with the state of Virginia. Forensic labs there were winning funding and legal authority from state legislators. Wong says she and other forensic scientists don’t concern themselves with innocence or guilt, but instead with

probability. That is all lab analysis can offer: statistics on how likely it is that a given person committed a given crime. If the likelihood is zero, lab tests can exonerate a suspect. If the likelihood is greater than that, it is up to a judge and jury to decide. Even in the Metro bike-path murder case, in which the suspect was convicted based on lab tests along with the testimony of a woman who had been attacked, Wong admits, “The best I could say was, ‘I can’t eliminate him, but I’m not sure it’s him.’ ” In 1997, despite an appeal that disputed the accuracy of the DNA analysis, the convicted man was put to death by lethal injection. Wong is not a supporter of capital punishment. Partly, she believes, it seems to let murderers off too easy. But also, she says, science can provide likelihoods, but not certainty. “I’m the type of person who’s never really sure. We can’t know if the person’s guilty. There are [other] reasons why his semen might be there—it could have been consensual. The science is neutral.” And so, when Wong appears before a jury, she tries her best to testify only to what the lab tests show, and to say truthfully that the results she is reporting are as accurate as science can possibly make them. Tests are run with controls and performed again and again, until there is no question. “You’d better be damn sure you’re right,” she says. “You can’t really afford to be wrong.”

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Jason Perkins ’93

BEER GEEK

By Jennifer Sutton

Jason Perkins ’93 grew up on a farm in Hartland, Vermont. His family grew vegetables and raised ducks, chickens, and pigs, and his happy childhood memories include shoveling manure and slaughtering chickens alongside his brother, mom, and dad (Dr. Carl Perkins, NMH’s former director of health services). The freezer was full of food the family produced themselves. Today, Perkins remains deeply connected to what he is consuming. He works as the brewmaster at Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, overseeing all aspects of production of a

NMH Magazine

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Brewing

variety of craft beers—choosing which grains to grind, deciding the balance of hops and yeast in a particular batch of beer, and pairing brews with foods at upscale restaurants. Allagash occupies a couple of warehouses on the west side of Portland. Its front entryway has been made into a light-filled tasting area, with a blond wood counter and bottles stacked against the walls in wooden crates. On an unseasonably warm February afternoon, two visitors stand at the curved bar with a row of bottles and glasses before them. They taste, ask questions about ingredients

and fermentation process, taste again, ask more questions. “That’s our standard consumer,” Perkins says. “They’re affectionately known as ‘beer geeks.’” Much of Perkins’s work takes place in a hangar-like room filled with 28 4,000-gallon stainless steel fermenting tanks. Here, he is a biologist, botanist, chemist, and engineer. On the one hand, making beer is simple: “water, malt, yeast, hops; that’s what’s in it,” he says. On the other hand, to make it consistently well, Perkins must study the cell biology of different yeast strains, understand the chemical reactions that occur as the starch

in grains converts to sugar, and know Several steeping processes follow, to experimental, incorporating fresh fruit, which variety of hops will impart the extract flavor from the various grains, such as tart cherries or raspberries, and flavor he is looking for. “There’s also spices, and hops. In the case of Allagash wild yeast strains—or no added yeast agriculture,” he says. “We don’t grow White, the golden beer that constitutes at all. “This is very different from what our own grain or hops, but we have to 70 percent of the company’s produc99.9 percent of breweries do,” Perkins be in touch with how they’re grown.” tion, the recipe includes two types of says. “We say, ‘What if we tried to do And his mechanical engineering knowwheat, malted barley, coriander, dried this?’” In this way, Perkins works like how, learned on the job, comes in handy orange peel, and an unnamed secret a chef. “We view our beer as a food, a when Allagash chooses new fermenting ingredient. Hops, the little flowers that really good-quality food, with the same tanks. “Textbook science doesn’t always provide bitterness, flavor, and aroma, depth of flavor as a great dish.” relate to what you’re living,” Perkins balance out the sweetness of the grain. Part of Perkins’s job is to help says. “But this science is very real to me.” “In the Budweisers of the world, hops orchestrate “beer dinners,” matching Perkins started making his own are just for balance, but in craft beer, Allagash beers with multiple courses beer around the time he graduated they play a much more important role,” prepared by restaurant chefs. Beyond from Bates College. He helped out at Perkins says. the burger-and-beer combo, he says, a small brewery in Montana for a year, The “wort,” as the infused liquid is “it hasn’t really been acknowledged that then moved back east and worked as called at this point, is cooled down to beer goes well with food.” But it does. a brewer at Gritty McDuff ’s, Perkins suggests Allagash’s a Portland brewpub, before “Interlude”—an acidic beer “ TEXTBOOK SCIENCE DOESN’T aged in an oak barrel with a joining Allagash 12 years ago. He was the second employee wild yeast—as a good match ALWAYS RELATE TO WHAT hired, and he did a little of for rich game meats such YOU’RE LIVING,” PERKINS everything—bottling, scrubas elk or venison. The deep, bing floors, sales, working at roasty Allagash Black pairs SAYS. “BUT THIS SCIENCE events. In recent years, business well with the assertiveness IS VERY REAL TO ME.” has skyrocketed; as of February, of Roquefort cheese. Even Allagash employed 30 people dessert gets a beer: Allagash’s (including Branch Rothschild ’98 and receive the yeast—“I almost worship fruity “Tripel” is perfect with the creamSam Livingstone ’99), and Perkins was yeast,” Perkins says—and then feriness of a cheesecake, Perkins says. expecting the delivery of six new fermentation begins. The process ranges Perkins has come a long way from menting tanks in early spring. from two weeks for Allagash White to the Pabst Blue Ribbon and Milwaukee’s When Allagash opened in 1995, it almost a year for specialty brews. All of Best he consumed in college, yet he is was one of the first American brewers Allagash’s beers receive a second infunot above drinking beer out of a plasto make Belgian-style beer, following sion of yeast and sugar, so they ferment tic pitcher. On the production floor, a tradition begun by monks centuries further in the bottle. a brewer named Greg walks up to ago. It’s not traditional the way English As brewmaster, Perkins no longer Perkins with a big smile on his face and or German beer is, Perkins says. Belgian works on the bottling line. “There’s a pitcher containing a couple inches brewers “are not constrained by adhermore managerial stuff, more desk-job of golden liquid in his hand. It’s a new ing to a certain style. They’re big on stuff, and I miss being hands-on every batch of “Victoria,” a beer that includes experimentation.” That means using a day. But now I have more control over Vidal Blanc grapes and is fermented variety of spices, hops, and yeast strains, the beer we make, and that’s exciting. with wine yeast. “We crush the grapes by which leads to beers that, initially, were There’s a lot more creativity,” he says. hand with baseball bats,” Perkins says. quite different from what American That is especially clear in a couple of He sniffs the contents of the pitcher, consumers, even consumers of craft back rooms at Allagash—the cellars— then sips. “It’s good,” he says. beer, were used to. where specialty batches ferment in oak At Allagash the alchemy begins each barrels that previously held wine or Jim Find more information at day at 5 am with the grinding of grain. Beam bourbon. These beers are often www.allagash.com.

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Matt 20 Albee NMH’87 Magazine

Photograph by Tami Meader

Oenology

PRESSING MATTERS A recent archaeological dig in an Armenian mountain village yielded evidence of grape winemaking 6,100 years ago, reported Robert Lee Hotz in a January 11, 2011, Wall Street Journal article on the history of wine. The ancient Greeks and Romans named gods in celebration of the potent potable, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “Wine is bottled poetry,” suggesting that winemaking is as much an artistic expression as it is a science. In 1985, a bottle of Chateau Lafite said to be from Thomas Jefferson’s cellar fetched $160,000. These facts hint at wine’s cultural significance but they belie the formula for production at its simplest: Yeast is added to, or derived naturally from, grapes; the yeast consumes sugars in the grapes and converts them into alcohol. To Matt Albee ’87, co-owner and winemaker of Eleven Winery on Bainbridge Island in Washington state, winemaking—and wine drinking—is that straightforward. “We’re all about making great wine, and making it fun,” declares the home page of his winery’s website. “We believe the better the wine, the more fun you’ll have.” Eleven Winery produces crisp, fruitdriven white wines, dry rosé, full-bodied reds, and red and white port-style dessert wines. “I try to make wines that I really enjoy and might like to drink,” he says. “I do try to cover a range—a little bit of something for a wide audience. “There’s a huge amount to know about wine,” Albee adds. “Some people know more than others. But I think everybody who has a tongue and a nose is equally qualified to judge how good a wine is.” Inspiration for the name of the winery, which Albee runs with his wife, Sarah, comes from Albee’s first career: bike racing. On a racing bike, the smallest cog in the rear cluster has 11 teeth.

By Heather Sullivan

Engaging it means maximum effort is being exerted. The winery’s sunlike logo—with 11 points—suggests dynamic movement, light, and grace. Albee’s passion for bicycling developed when he was a faculty brat at NMH—his mom, Jane, taught biology— and he joined the cycling team and won his first race. His second calling came later, after studying physics at Harvey Mudd College and the University of Colorado. Sarah introduced him to great wine at the dinner table and during tours of Napa Valley. Albee jokes that it was a lateral move from bicycling to winemaking—neither endeavor was likely to garner fame or fortune. “I feel like winemaking chose me, and I’ve been playing catch-up,” says Albee of his transition from bicyclist to vintner. In 1999 he signed on as an apprentice with Paper Mill Winery in California, where he spent three years learning the business. He and Sarah then relocated to Bainbridge Island, just west of Seattle, to be near family. They bought a fixer-upper, with a garage that would become the winery. In 2003 they crushed their first grapes. Eleven doesn’t specialize in one style or grape varietal. Instead, the winery sources grapes from four local vineyards to produce eight varietals and two signature blends: La Ronde, produced from Syrah, Malbec, and Petit Verdot, and La Primavera, a dry rosé made by the saignée method—bleeding off the juice after limited contact with the grape skins. Albee is determined to make wines that partner with great food. Food is a connection between bicycling and wine: Serious bicyclists must consume many calories, he says, so they might as well be tasty ones. “One of my favorite pairings is surprising: Sauvignon Blanc with tomato sauce,” he says. “Most people think of red wine with red sauce. For me, a light went on. I thought of the high acidity

of tomato sauce—it’s essentially a fruit puree. I realized that what I needed was a crisp, fruity wine. I grabbed a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and it [the combination] was dynamite.” It’s this ability to respond to one’s instincts that Albee puts to good use during strings of 16-hour days making wine. It echoes a common NMH experience. Albee’s generosity also suggests that he and NMH made a robust pairing: After several years of building his business and

“ EVERYBODY WHO HAS A TONGUE AND A NOSE IS EQUALLY QUALIFIED TO JUDGE HOW GOOD A WINE IS.” raising a family, Albee turned his passion for winemaking into a force for good by directing all winery profits to charity. A friend had inspired him, he says, by donating his company’s profits to charity. “The more I learned about corporations, the more I came to believe that bad things can come from companies driven solely by profit,” Albee says. With Eleven’s annual production hovering at 1,500 cases, proceeds are relatively small. But Albee’s intention is big: He plans to double the winery’s charity every year and become one of the state’s best and most prolific winemakers. “Sarah and I wanted to instill a sense of social responsibility in our kids,” he says. “It made sense to use our passion for wine as the basis of our philanthropic efforts. We could show our kids that helping others is really important.” Find more information at www.elevenwinery.com. Eleven is a member of the Winery Alliance of Bainbridge Island.

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PUBLIC HEALTH = PUBLIC GOOD By Sally Atwood Hamilton ’65

For centuries, smallpox scourged mankind, spreading death as it marched across countries and leaving survivors blind and disfigured for life. Although it is generally believed that the virus first appeared around 10,000 BC, the first documented case was Ramses V, pharaoh of Egypt from 1146 to 1141 BC. The last reported case was a hospital cook in Somalia in 1977. A year later, in 1978, the World Health Organization declared the world smallpox-free, the result of a decadeslong, worldwide immunization effort. Today, the only remaining smallpox virus lies in deep storage at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and at a research center in Russia. The eradication of smallpox is a triumph for science, medicine, and public health. Ed Brink ’56 points to his work on the virus’s eradication as the most satisfying of his 33-year career as an epidemiologist and public health physician at the CDC. Brink didn’t plan to become an infectious disease detective when he left Mount Hermon and headed for Trinity College, though he did leave with a love of chemistry and an inclination toward medicine. After the second year of his medical residency, like thousands of altruistic Americans at the time, he joined the Peace Corps. His time serving as a physician for Peace Corps volunteers in Nigeria and as a researcher on Guam changed the direction of his life. Improving health by fighting the spread of deadly diseases on a worldwide scale became more alluring than treating individual patients. While in Denver finishing his interrupted residency, Brink discovered the

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perfect venue for his interests: one of his mentors was a former member of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) of the CDC and had worked on smallpox eradication. Brink found his way to the CDC, and in 1970 he returned to West Africa as an epidemiologist, helping to eradicate smallpox there and then later in India. Brink loved the bigger picture of epidemiology: working in the field to determine where outbreaks were located, who contracted a disease, how it spread, and developing a plan to stop the transmission chain through isolation and immunization. “It’s not just treating one person,” he says. “When you stop the entire chain of transmission, it’s for the public good.” With smallpox eradicated, he returned to the United States and continued his service as an EIS officer, first at the state level in Connecticut and Massachusetts and then at the national level at the CDC in Atlanta. Other than a three-year stint with the World Health Organization to help eradicate polio in Southeast Asia in the early 1990s, Brink spent his entire career with the CDC. He retired last summer. In his last years at the CDC, Brink’s focal point became the growing antivaccination movement. Vaccinations are the cornerstone of public health. Although children are required to have immunizations before they start school, exemptions are available for religious or personal reasons. More parents have been taking these exemptions in the last decade or so, ever since a British doctor suggested a link between vaccinations and autism. As a result, Brink says that between 2 and 5 percent of children

around the country are not being vaccinated against routine childhood infectious diseases. If exposed, these children will become ill and can become a source of further disease transmission. No vaccine is 100 percent protective and 100 percent without side effects, such as mild fever and soreness. “Some parents perceive that some vaccines are a greater risk than the disease would be,” says Brink, especially the measles vaccination, which was reported to be linked to autism. “When something like this comes up, there is extensive effort put into basic research to provide the scientific proof for what one sees in the press.” To date, Brink says, no connection has been found. The British doctor has since been discredited and the British medical journal that published the paper has issued a retraction. Yet the debate about vaccinations continues among skeptical parents. Brink says that’s partly due to the mass of information available online, which is of such variable quality that it’s difficult for parents to be discriminating about what they read. It is also due to ineffective communication between health professionals and the communities they serve. There is no vaccine for what Brink identifies as this country’s biggest health threat today—obesity. Approximately 20 percent of children and adolescents and about one-third of adults are obese and at grave risk for developing diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Brink says solving that menace, which we visit upon ourselves, will require a whole new approach to public health.

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Photograph by Andrew Kornylak

Medicine

Ed Brink ’56 Spring/Summer |

THE HORSE’S MOUTH When a horse in Houston has a toothache, the owners call Caroline Niederman ’78. The veterinarian, who specializes in equine dentistry, loads up her mobile clinic with instruments and heads out to the barn or paddock where her patient is waiting. Niederman, whose client base numbers in the hundreds, examines up to eight horses every day. When she started her Texas practice 12 years ago, Niederman found a need in the equine community for a vet who specialized exclusively in dentistry. “A number of other vets said, ‘You can do dental work in this barn and this barn. We don’t want to do it,’” Niederman says. “I just started looking at mouths, and I enjoyed it.”

By Rachael Hanley ’98

Raised in Connecticut, where she attended public high school for her freshman and sophomore years, Niederman did just enough classwork to get by and seemed destined for little past graduation. When a guidance counselor informed her parents that she might not be right for college, they decided to send her to Northfield Mount Hermon. Niederman says it was at NMH that she started learning study skills, became interested in math and science, and developed confidence in her abilities. “The only reason I got to this point is because I had a strong education and learned how to study,” Niederman says. After NMH, Niederman studied biochemistry at Bowdoin College, and got involved with large-animal care while attending the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. She became especially interested in learning how to prevent health problems common in large animals. For example, horses’ permanent teeth, which emerge by the time an animal is 4 or 5 years old, can be up to three inches long. When they erupt from the gum line, they may be uneven, requiring filing to level them. Over time, as a result of their side-to-side chewing motion, horses often develop sharp points on the edges of their teeth that can hurt delicate cheeks and tongues. Caroline Niederman ’78 Niederman corrects such common problems in her

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mobile horse stock—which she hitches up to her truck—where a sedated horse can safely stand while she works. She uses a speculum to open the horse’s mouth; she is then able to examine the 24 teeth, check the tongue and cheeks for signs of ulceration, and make sure nothing is loose. She dons a miner’s headlamp to look for abnormalities and probe for signs of periodontal disease. Tools powered by an air compressor help Niederman fix any problems. An average checkup lasts about 45 minutes, and every patient’s owner gets a followup call or email. Niederman’s focus on prevention is one reason she puts such a strong emphasis on educating horse owners about equine dentistry. Since domestic horses often live into their 20s or 30s, well after they’ve ground through their teeth, Niederman also walks owners through the special diet their aging horse needs in order to avoid digestive issues. Pages on her website also explain equine dental anatomy, common problems, and care. She says that, over the years, her clients, from owners of highperformance dressage horses to officers with the Houston mounted patrol, have become increasingly involved in the dental care of their animals. “Because I see such a range of horses in terms of their jobs, I see their souls and what a great species they are,” Niederman says. “Whether they’re controlling traffic or jumping over obstacles, I want the horses to be listening to their riders and not to the pain in their mouths.” Find more information at www.txequinedentist.com.

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Photographs by Sallie Gillispie

Veterinary Medicine

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DOCTOR, TEACHER, HEALER

M Medicine

She’s not your typical doctor, nor will you find her in a typical medical office. Angela Lambert ’83 lives and works in a colorful 1925 Craftsman bungalow, complete with a welcoming front porch, a comfortable education room containing a large library, and a spacious kitchen where she offers hands-on healthy cooking workshops. Dr. Angela, as her patients call her, is a naturopathic doctor and founder of A Healing Path, Inc., a family medical practice in Portland, Oregon. She integrates both the ancient and modern philosophies of natural medicine. “My job is to teach you how to be healthy,” Lambert says. “In Latin, docere, or doctor, means to teach. “I often ask my patients, ‘What do you think is wrong with you? It’s not always simply about what chemical you’re missing,’” Lambert says. “Let’s

figure out why your physiology isn’t functioning on a scientific level, but also investigate the spiritual and emotional parts as well. People get labeled with their diseases. Symptoms indicate that something is out of balance. My job is to help them figure out what it is and help them heal.” Lambert’s holistic understanding of the world and her place in it evolved from her rural childhood in New Hampshire and her four years at NMH. Spirituality and nature were inseparable aspects of her life. “I was one of those kids who always connected to plants and trees,” she says. While at NMH, Lambert became a deacon. “This brought me the sense of community and connection that I hungered for.” Another passion of Lambert’s was music, and she went on to study music therapy and education in college.

Angela Lambert ’83

Lambert’s decision to become a naturopath came from her own experience with alternative medicine as a young adult with health challenges. Faced with some severe forms of treatment, Lambert sought out the help of a naturopath at the suggestion of her father. Not only did her body heal, but the course of her life shifted. “That doctor taught me that I have a great deal of influence over my health. I learned that we do not have to be victims of our diagnoses.” She had found a purpose: to educate others about the power of natural medicine. Already a licensed practitioner of music therapy and therapeutic massage, Lambert attended the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, the oldest naturopathic medical school in the country. She studied anatomy, physiology, microbiology, biochemistry, clinical and physical diagnosis, laboratory diagnosis, and pathology, and also botanicals and herbs, nutrition, homeopathy, physical medicine, acupuncture, and how lifestyle affects health. After earning a doctorate in naturopathic medicine and a master’s of science in Oriental medicine, she opened her own practice. Lambert will make an exciting loop this year—literally—by making her practice bicoastal. An office close to family in New Hampshire will open in fall 2011, indirectly strengthening her already strong connection with NMH. “I recite to people all the time that the gift I received from NMH was the connection of the head, the heart, and the hand,” she says. “I have a job and yet I don’t see it as a job. It’s not just something I do; it’s who I am.” Find more information at www.ahealingpath.org.

NMH Magazine

Photograph by Leah Verwey

By Megan Buchanan Cherry ’91

Mychelle Farmer ’71

Photograph by Bill Denison

ASKING QUESTIONS, TREATING PATIENTS By Rachael Hanley ‘98

How can we help? What problems can we solve? What can’t we solve? These are questions Mychelle Farmer ’71 has asked throughout her medical career, whether she was working in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, at a clinic in Baltimore that treats people with sexually transmitted diseases (STD), or with traditional healers in Haiti. The answers to these difficult questions are not always clear. But the spirit of inquiry is what Farmer considers crucial to being a good doctor. For Farmer, a native of North Carolina, this spirit bloomed when she transferred to NMH for her junior year of high school. A school-sponsored trip to France during her senior year gave her the confidence, and the language skills, to head to Haiti three years later as a college student to work with herbalists and midwives. That visit struck a deep chord with Farmer. “What I learned when working in Haiti was that there were many, many varied approaches to working with illness,” she says. “It was compelling to see how different lives were without access to quality Western medical care.” Insights she gleaned in Haiti stuck with her through her time at Cornell

Medical School in New York City, and her subsequent internship, residency, and fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “When working in Haiti as an undergraduate, I came to understand that the prevention of disease is a big part” of care, Farmer says. “As a physician, there was an opportunity for me to really intervene in terms of prevention.” For her specialty, Farmer chose pediatrics, which she says was “perfect, because it allowed me to deal with such a broad range of problems.” At the same time, she focused on ways to prevent disease. She was among a community of physicians who, decades ago, noticed a strange phenomenon in urban areas. Groups of men had immune systems that were shutting down; they were subsequently dying of diseases that people did not usually contract. “When we had a diagnosis, it was AIDS,” Farmer says. Farmer tracked the disease’s spread through the areas where she worked— the pediatric unit and an urban STD clinic in Baltimore—and eventually joined a team of experts that was developing prevention programs for young people at high risk of contracting diseases such as HIV.

HIV and AIDS had also emerged in countries such as Haiti, where the modes of transmission and the risks weren’t fully understood, Farmer says. After working in Baltimore for more than two decades, Farmer was hired by Catholic Relief Services in 2004 to work on programs in AIDS relief and for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Farmer spent the next few years traveling to Haiti and Ghana with a team of Catholic Relief Services specialists, organizing health care programs for HIV and AIDS patients. “HIV is a unique problem in places like Haiti, or rural Zambia; you have to provide continuous access to care and treatment,” Farmer says. “It’s [also] about developing a system of care in clinics and medical institutions so they can sustain their efforts.” Farmer attributes much of what she’s been able to accomplish as a doctor to NMH. The school “enforced the approach to learning that I would build on in my career,” she says. “NMH encouraged inquiry and encouraged students to push themselves. It prepared me to have the discipline to work in difficult situations.”

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Engineering

Bob Pease ’57

NMH Magazine

Photograph by Jason Doiy

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ANALOG MAN

By Mary Seymour

Bob Pease ’57 feels no need to change with the times. He was last seen cleanshaven in 1959, and he’s been driving the same Volkswagen for 42 years. He dislikes computers, although, for email purposes, he tolerates the presence of a MacBook in his San Francisco home. Mainly, he eats meals off the top of it, since his drill press occupies the dining room table. Pease describes himself as an iconoclast and an engineer. More specifically, he’s an expert at designing analog circuits. An analog circuit uses continuous time voltages and currents, and can be used for hi-fi audio amplifiers or power supplies for record players, computers, phones, and radios. Pease can build an analog circuit in five minutes flat; he’s designed thousands in the last five decades. In 1991 he wrote the bible of the business, Troubleshooting Analog Circuits, treasured by electronics engineers around the world. There are currently 35,000 copies in print, including eight translations. Pease’s editor wants him to write an updated version, but “there’s nothing that needs to be added,” Pease points out. “The analog business doesn’t change much.” After graduating from MIT with a degree in electrical engineering, he started at Philbrick Researchers in 1961, where he designed op amps, voltage-to-frequency converters, and analog computing models. Several of his designs netted the company millions, and one seismic amplifier traveled to the moon in 1969, where it

stayed behind to transmit noises from lunar earthquakes. Pease points to photos of the lunar landing site and says, “Yeah, that’s my junk over there.” He moved on to National Semiconductor Corp. in 1976, where he fielded inquiries from all around the country. “I was sort of the Ann Landers and Dear Abby of the electronics racket in the analog world,” he says. “People would call and say, ‘I want a circuit that does such-andsuch. Can you do it?’” More often than not, he could. Pease retired in 2009, but many of the devices he designed at National Semiconductor and Philbrick are still in production. He claims to be a lifelong “lazy bastard,” but has lectured in 200 cities across the country and 145 cities outside the U.S., holds 21 patents, and is a longtime contributor and columnist for Electronic Design, the premier magazine of the electronic design industry. His column, “Pease Porridge,” mixes technical advice, helpful hints, and eclectic stories that run the gamut from family hiking trips to tactical errors made by Japanese pilots in the Battle of the Midway. Hiking is Pease’s personal passion outside of analog circuit design. He and his wife, Nancy, have trekked in Nepal nine times and hiked a third of the way around Mount Everest. He began by tramping in the woods as a boy in rural Connecticut; at Mount Hermon, he joined the Explorer Scouts. Four years ago, on a hiking expedition in

New Hampshire with NMH classmates Malcolm Peck and Jon Staley, he lost three-and-a-half toes to frostbite.

Diagram by Bob Pease ’57

As for his Mount Hermon days, he remembers some “very good teachers who challenged our butts”—in particular, his Latin teacher, Doc Stetson. “He said he’d give us a test every day, and he did. I’ve found that knowing Latin helps me be methodical.” Retirement hasn’t signaled the end of Pease’s career, so being methodical still comes in handy. Right now he’s working on an analog circuit—at his kitchen table, his designing and building headquarters—that detects contraband, which could mean nuclear materials, explosives, or people hiding inside a truck. It’s a potential hot commodity for air terminals and shipping ports, and Pease is part of a team of consultants on the project. The goal: to have a prototype ready in about six months.

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Stephanie Cho ’11

Education

SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31 Chemistry Is Everywhere 31 Physics First 32 Weather Tracker 32 Cow Boy 33 Science Olympians 35 Add Bloodroot and Stir 35 Treasure Island 36 Think Differently

By Jennifer Sutton and Jessica Lindsey

In Cutler Science Center, students and faculty are conceiving ideas, creating research projects, and analyzing results. See what happens when the head, heart, and hand meet chemistry, biology, and a crew of Science Olympians.

NMH Magazine

CHEMISTRY IS EVERYWHERE What Stephanie Cho ’11 enjoys about chemistry is the precision. “I like the equations,” she says. “I like doing experiments and getting the results we’re supposed to get. It’s not cut and dried, really. It’s just exact.” Last year, as a junior, Cho was among a handful of students who took a yearlong class called Linked AP Chemistry, an honors-level first-time dive into the subject. Her biggest project for the class focused on the emission of methane gas from different biomass samples. She had learned about fossil fuels and alternative energy sources in biology her sophomore year. “I liked the fact that she and her partner chose their topic to expand upon what they had learned the year before,” says chemistry teacher Michelle Hurley. To begin conducting the necessary experiments, Cho put on plastic gloves and a brave face and went down to the farm to collect a pile of cow manure—biomass sample number one. “It was sooo gross. And heavy, too,” she says. Food

scraps from Alumni Hall and part of a hay bale constituted samples two and three. In the chemistry lab, Cho and her partner assembled an apparatus out of beakers and tubing for collecting and measuring methane gas, then tested their biomass samples in overnight experiments. After considerable trial and error, they determined that the cow manure emitted much more methane than the other two materials. They also determined that not all aspects of chemistry are exact and precise. Working with cow manure and food scraps, Cho says, was “kind of messy.” It was, however, a good demonstration of how chemistry translates from equations in a classroom into the real world. “One of the things I like about science is that it’s really practical,” Cho says. “Chemistry is everywhere. Like the smelly stuff that gets put on the roads and sidewalks [on campus] in winter. It smells like soy sauce. But it doesn’t affect the soil composition. That’s organic chemistry.”

Photographs by Sharon LaBella-Lindale, Glenn Minshall, and David Warren

PHYSICS FIRST For approximately 15 years, NMH science teachers have taught physics to ninth graders. Before biology, before chemistry—“It makes complete sense,” says David Reeder, chair of NMH’s science department. “They study energy, matter, motion, how it all interacts together. These concepts underlie all other laws of science.” The “Physics First” philosophy was officially developed about 20 years ago by the American Association of Physics

Teachers, turning on its head the traditional biology-chemistry-physics sequence for teaching high school science. (NMH was among the first independent schools to adopt the approach, but in recent years more peer schools have followed suit.) Eighty years ago, Reeder says, biology was mostly about the classification of species; it was a good place to start. Not so much anymore. Advances in biology, mainly at the molecular level, have made the field more complicated and sophisticated. At the same time, many science teachers were moving away from the traditional belief that students need trigonometry skills—typically taught to older high schoolers—to learn physics. Algebra skills are sufficient to master the basics, Reeder says, and in a conceptual physics class, students acquire problem-solving skills, lab skills, and observation and reasoning skills that will help them learn biology, chemistry, and other sciences. “It’s not the physics class from 30 years ago,” Reeder says.

“It’s challenging, but it’s geared for ninth- and 10th-grade minds.” NMH offers more advanced physics classes for older students, including an AP class, but after reading through a recent AP exam, Reeder estimates that Physics I and Honors Physics I students have the skills to answer 80 percent of the questions. Detractors of the physics-first curriculum say that it creates watered-down physics classes—that if you take away the advanced math tools, you don’t have real physics. Reeder disagrees. “A lot of [advanced] physics is actually taught like applied mathematics,” he says. “Calculus is what really brings out the beauty and power of advanced physics, but even a traditional high-school physics class avoids using that level of sophistication. We use a more hands-on, concrete approach. It becomes a true science class. Our goal is to get students to understand the concepts and how to apply them to other sciences and to their everyday lives.”

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COW BOY Lucas Van Nes ’12 was “born with the cows,” he says. He grew up on a dairy farm in Dorset, England, so naturally, when he had to select a project for Rob Buyea’s Biology I class, he chose to work with those familiar animals. “When we went on a class visit down to the farm, Richard Odman told us how one of the cows had a milk deficiency,” Van Nes says. “Straight away when I heard that, I knew I wanted to work on this.” Milk fever, a calcium deficiency in pregnant cows, is hereditary and causes reduced blood calcium levels. A cow suffering from milk fever experiences low body temperature, weakness, and loss of appetite. Van Nes observed the suffering cow, Lindsey, and, with guidance from Odman, he adjusted her diet by lowering the calcium levels in her food. This forced the cow’s body to produce its own calcium. He then compared the activity, growth, and behavior of the cow to another pregnant cow that did not suffer from milk fever. When Lindsey the cow gave birth without symptoms of milk fever, Van Nes had evidence to support his hypothesis— that removing calcium from the cow’s diet would correct the deficiency. “The cow was standing up when she gave birth and that was pretty big,” Van Nes explains. “That meant the deficiency (when she gave birth) wasn’t that great.” He then concluded his project by comparing the growth of Lindsey’s calf to the calf born to the healthy cow. He found that after the first few days, both calves grew normally.

“People learn in different ways, and I’ve found that handson is one of the ways that I learn best,” says Van Nes. “That’s why I decided to choose this project. I didn’t want to be just reading about how tall a bean plant might grow.” Lucas Van Nes ’12

WEATHER TRACKER Want to know the weather on campus? Check in with the NMH weather station on the roof of Cutler Science Center. “The closest National Weather Service site is in Orange (Massachusetts), which is about 12 miles to the southeast and it’s a different climate there,” explains science

www.wunderground.com (Location: 01354)

NMH Magazine

department chair David Reeder. “It’s up in the hills and we’ve been seeing some real differences in the weather they get and the weather we have here.” The wireless weather station on campus is powered by a solar panel and measures temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, and barometric pressure. The information collected by the station is stored every 15 minutes and is automatically sent to the website Weather Underground. “There are really neat patterns you can see when a front moves through,” Reeder says. “It brings the weather alive in a different way than if you didn’t have access to all that.”

The weather station is also a recordkeeping tool, and can track climate change right here on campus. “The fear with climate change is that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, will act as a global greenhouse and warm the planet,” Reeder says. “We have seen a steady increase in temperatures and we’ve had some of the warmest winters on record here in the last 20 years.” In the 2009–2010 school year, the average temperature on campus rose by 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Ironically, in January the station measured the temperature at –12 degrees Fahrenheit—the lowest reading on campus in six years.

Jason Hua ’12

SCIENCE OLYMPIANS

In a small room in the basement of Cutler Science Center, worktables are strewn with stuff: glass and plastic tubing, pulleys in assorted sizes, a hacksaw, a crosscut saw, a bottle of vinegar, a box of baking soda, wire cutters, batteries, drill bits, old CDs, mousetraps, a can of WD40, and a roll of duct tape. Jason Hua ’12 would say that each of these items has a purpose, especially when it comes to competing in the Massachusetts Science Olympiad, a competition that every spring brings together dozens of high school teams from across the state. In the hands of Hua and his classmates, the baking soda and vinegar will mix together in a beaker to form CO2, which will inflate a balloon in a Rube Goldbergtype device. The old CDs will become wheels on a balsa-wood car propelled by a mousetrap. There will be a windmill. There will be a “sumobot”—a

remote-controlled robot car that must run an opponent out of a ring, “like in a real sumo match,” says David Laovorovit ’13. Hua launched NMH’s Science Olympiad team in November 2010, reincarnating a campus science club from the previous year. With guidance from physics and astronomy teacher Hughes Pack, Hua and his recruits started brushing up on Olympiad topics, which range from forensics to fossils, from ecology to human physiology—“all aspects of science,” Hua says. The competition includes written tests, but the hands-on engineering projects are the bigger draw. They require the students to collaborate in twos and threes to create and build a design that meets certain criteria. Hua is the kind of person who goes to the library and checks out Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on Scientific

Revolutions of the Twentieth Century for pleasure. He loved airplanes as a kid. Now, having taken honors chemistry, he is fascinated by atoms and molecules. “It’s the cutting-edge stuff,” he says. “It’s very bizarre. The weirdness of it makes me want to know more.” Hua rows crew, which he says is good training for “mental toughness.” And, perhaps, for being modest about

WHAT DO BAKING SODA, VINEGAR, MOUSETRAPS, AND OLD CDS HAVE IN COMMON? his role on NMH’s Science Olympiad team. “I want everybody on the team to feel attached to the team,” he says. “I believe everybody needs to be acknowledged.”

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Maggie Potter ’12

“ IT WASN’T JUST SOME INFORMATION I LOOKED UP ONLINE; IT WAS MORE HANDS-ON. I LIKED THE CHALLENGE OF THAT.” 34

NMH Magazine

ADD BLOODROOT AND STIR Last year, when it was time for students in Honors Biology to choose a final project, teacher Mary Hefner mentioned that a local friend of hers, a fiber artist who shears her own sheep, was willing to help out. The ears of Maggie Potter ’12 perked up. The daughter of a ceramic artist, she was used to working with clay, and this kind of “tactile project” sounded perfect. An acquaintance had tried unsuccessfully to make dye out of raspberries, and the idea intrigued Potter. For her own project, she decided to create dyes from local plant sources and test them on fibers with different cellular compositions— namely, wool, which is a protein fiber, and cotton, a cellulose fiber. Hefner’s friend supplied yarn, spun from wool off her sheep, and showed Potter how to make natural dyes. Potter began to collect her materials. She foraged fiddlehead ferns along the edge of Shadow Lake, black walnut shells from a tree in Northfield, and bloodroot flowers and stems in Hefner’s garden on campus.

She chopped, mashed, and crushed the dye materials, then steeped them in boiling water. She added her fiber samples— wool yarn and scraps of a cotton T-shirt—and let them soak in five-gallon buckets for increasing intervals, adding a metallic ion called “mordant” to help the dyes set into the cellulose fibers of the cotton. “I was doing this in the kitchen of my dorm,” Potter says. “People thought I was psychotic. I kept saying, ‘It’s science; don’t worry.’” The nut shells produced a cocoa-brown color, the bloodroot a vibrant orange-red, and the fiddleheads a green so pale it was barely noticeable, especially in the T-shirt scraps. “I was really disappointed with how the cotton fabric turned out, but I was pleased with the yarn,” Potter says. Her presentation of the experiment earned her third place in NMH’s science fair last spring, but Potter was most excited about the applied nature of the project. “It wasn’t just some information I looked up online,” she says. “It was more hands-on. I liked the challenge of that.”

TREASURE ISLAND For four days in March, 10 students got down on their knees on Rarotoka Island, just off the southern coast of New Zealand, and pulled handfuls of overgrown grass out of the ground. The goal: to help the Ngai Tahu, a Maori tribe, clear invasive species from this 220-acre expanse of hill and beach in order to allow native plants, crowded out more than a century ago, to regrow.

The community service project capped NMH’s annual six-week trip to New Zealand, which is part of a semester-long environmental studies course that covers science, history, and literature. According to Glenn Minshall, director of outdoor education and a native New Zealander, who led the trip with English teacher Meg Donnelly and science teacher Becca Leslie, the visit to Rarotoka was an unusual opportunity to experience firsthand the destructive effects of colonialism. The New Zealand Crown commandeered the island from the Ngai Tahu in the mid-1800s. Cattle and sheep stripped the land of its native vegetation. After the government returned the island as part of the 1988 Waitangi Treaty Settlement, the tribe, with help from the

department of conservation, began the slow process of restoration. Mikimiki (a shrub) and harakeke (a kind of flax) have been re-established, among others. The tribe intends to reintroduce native wildlife in the future. “It is most commonly seen that humans are hurting the process or the survival of a species, but here we are doing just the opposite,” Kyra White ’12 wrote in the journal she kept in New Zealand. During their stay, the students weeded around hundreds of young plants. “Not glamorous work, but otherwise those seedlings get smothered,” Minshall says. They also walked the island with a tribal elder and learned about the biodiversity of the place and Maori spiritual and cultural traditions. They caught glimpses of endangered birds and gathered traditional foods such as kina (sea eggs) and abalone. The Ngai Tahu “call the island their treasure,” White wrote. “I can see why.”

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THINK DIFFERENTLY What is half of 13? In a mathematics classroom, the answer is six-and-a-half, but a student in the extracurricular program Destination ImagiNation (DI) would say the answer is eight. DI kids, who learn to think about problems in nontraditional ways, would explain it like this: the Roman numeral XIII cut in half horizontally is VIII. DI is a nonprofit organization that involves 100,000 students across the U.S. and in 30 countries. It is a science club, a drama club, and an art club; school “teams” of DI students work together, using scientific methods, to solve challenges and create presentations and skits to share their results. “When we have a project in class, I look at how to solve the problem differently than most people because that’s what DI teaches you,” says Molly Hogsett ’13. Hogsett participated in DI at her elementary and middle school in New Hampshire, and when she enrolled at NMH, her goal was to start a team on campus. She joined with

By Jessica Lindsey

math and computer studies teacher Ashley Zanca, who also participated in DI when she was in high school, to establish the NMH team. Each year, DI announces seven challenges for teams to choose from. The 2011 options included building a structure out of aluminum foil that would hold weight, researching energy cycles, and designing and performing in a traveling road show. Each team spends months preparing and then competes against other DI teams working on the same challenge. Last year, the NMH team chose structure building. This year, they selected “projectOUTREACH,” which required them to “address a community need.” They went right to work. “We’ve been seeing all of this stuff on the news about bullying; it’s a really big problem,” Hogsett says. “We don’t want people to be bullied or to act as bullies and that’s why we chose this challenge.” The NMH team decided to work with kids in elementary schools, library

Empowerment is the goal: The Destination ImagiNation group collected pictures of people holding signs that state “I AM.”

NMH Magazine

programs, and Girl Scout troops. They designed and led workshops to build self-awareness, trust, confidence, and teamwork. “We start the workshops by naming some of our insecurities,” says Hogsett. “It’s really hard to do.” The NMH team members named their project “I AM”—an acronym for International Acceptance Movement. They created a website and collected pictures of people holding homemade signs that state “I AM...” The goal, says Zanca, is empowerment. “They want [the younger kids] to state confidently: I AM short, I AM smart, or whatever they may be,” Zanca says. But the kids the NMH students are working to inspire aren’t the only ones boosting their self-esteem. In February, the DI team members presented their project at an all-school meeting on campus, something Hogsett never thought they would have the confidence to do. And in April, they got a standing ovation when they presented their research and results at a DI tournament in Nashua, New Hampshire. They won first place in their challenge category and the Spirit of Discovery and ImagiNation Award for serving as positive role models, and the opportunity to move on to the DI “Global Finals” in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they’ll compete with teams from all over the world. “These girls are go-getters,” Zanca says. “They are willing to take a risk. They are the first ones in their classes to become engaged, and they are more interested in what they are learning because they can relate it to other classes and situations in their lives.” Find more information about the NMH team’s “I AM” project at http://iamdi.weebly.com.

Lee De Forest

THE

FATHER OF RADIO On May 4, 1891, the president of Talladega College (today Alabama’s oldest historically black private college) wrote to the Mount Hermon School for Boys, seeking a place for his son, Lee De Forest. “Can a boy fit there for College as in Exeter or Andover?...He has read 4 books of Caesar, something of Virgil + is now in the Buccolics.” The same day, the 17-year-old De Forest wrote on his own behalf, “I wish to prepare for the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University…I intend to be a mechanical engineer.” And prepare he did. In Mount Hermon’s newly opened Silliman Science Laboratory, De Forest did so well that he was invited to deliver the “Scientific Essay” at the Class Day exercises at the end of his senior year in 1893. A story in The Hermonite stated: “The essay by L. De Forest proved most interesting, containing many valuable thoughts”—just the sort of comment a reporter makes when he hasn’t understood a word of what he’s heard. Young De Forest’s speech is lost, but as the exclamation point on his high school academic career, it was part of what gained him admittance to Sheffield, precisely as he had hoped. At Yale, he threw himself into the emerging field of electrical engineering, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1896 and a doctorate three years later. De Forest was inspired by the electromagnetism theories of Heinrich Hertz, who had died in 1894, and by Guglielmo Marconi’s practical application of them in wireless telegraphy at the end of the 19th century. De Forest proceeded to spend his life working on wireless communication. He is credited with more than 300 patents, perhaps none more important than the Audion tube in 1906 and the three-element “vacuum” tube two years later. These devices revolutionized wireless communication by detecting and amplifying radio waves. In 1910 De Forest famously broadcast Enrico Caruso singing “Cavalleria Rusticana” at the

By Peter Weis ’78

Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, the first public radio broadcast of live music or voice (though as early as 1908, De Forest had played phonograph records and broadcast them from the Eiffel Tower). These inventions did not come without challenges. The British inventor J.A. Fleming had developed a tube similar to the Audion but without De Forest’s unique “grid” element; still, Fleming claimed that De Forest’s work was derivative. Edwin Armstrong, the American engineer who invented FM radio, also questioned De Forest’s work and they battled in court. Almost universally, the courts held with De Forest. In spite of this, the cost to De Forest’s reputation was staggering, and, coupled with his lack of interest in making money, caused him to declare bankruptcy in 1936. De Forest’s other work includes the development of “phonofilm,” which allowed sound to be added to movies, a process for which he was not only granted a patent in 1923, but also awarded, belatedly, a special Oscar in 1959. His patents improved radar, color television, and radio telephony. Through it all he remained interested in the work of the Northfield and Mount Hermon schools. With the 1942 publication of his book Television, Today and Tomorrow, he wrote to the schools: “I wish I could send with the book a check for a hundred thousand dollars, but you will have to accept the book for the wish.”

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Magazine

Alumni News S

Photograph courtesy of HSO

38 Newsmakers 45 Class Notes

Newsmakers

First Movement, Hartford Symphony THE HARTFORD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (HSO) has selected Carolyn Kuan ’95 as its musical director, making her the youngest and first female conductor to lead the HSO. Kuan casually shrugs off the firsts. “When I’m doing a good job, everyone should forget if I’m a woman, Asian, tall, skinny, whatever.” Kuan was selected from seven finalists (winnowed from more than 100 candidates) for the directorship after a two-year search. Search committee member Steven Wade says Kuan “showed us amazing energy, an artistry of great nuance and refinement, and a wonderful sense of connection to both the music and the players.” Kuan will begin conducting the HSO, New England’s secondlargest orchestra, full time in September. Her appointment marks a homecoming to the Connecticut River Valley; after attending NMH, she earned degrees at Smith College and the Hartt School of Music. She ascended the conducting ranks prestissimo, starting as an artist-in-residence at the New York City Ballet, moving on to

NMH Magazine

assistant conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, then earning accolades as associate conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Since 2009 she’s been a freelance conductor, guestdirecting orchestras in New York, Chicago, Berlin, and Paris, among other cities. Now she must strategize how to make the HSO a leader and a model 21st-century orchestra. “Community engagement, partnering with local resources, and creating programming that reaches out to draw in new audiences are top among my goals for the Hartford Symphony,” she stated during the search process. NMH Director of Orchestras Steven Bathory-Peeler is thrilled about Kuan’s appointment. “This is wonderful and amazing on so many levels. I hope to start taking students to concerts next year—we have been going to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but now it will be the Hartford Symphony Orchestra!”

The Producer CAITRIN ROGERS ’00 WORKS behind the scenes in the film industry as an independent documentary producer, so her name isn’t recognizable. Her work, however, is. As co-producer of The Tillman Story, she helped bring to the screen the story of Pat Tillman, the NFL player turned Army Ranger who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. The film also follows Tillman’s family members, who accused the U.S. government of fraud and of exploiting Tillman’s death for propaganda purposes. Rogers worked with director Amir Bar-Lev on the documentary, which played in theaters last fall and was released on DVD in February. She began her film career in 2004 as an assistant editor, working in postproduction for a variety of companies, including MTV, VH1, BET, and Disney. She worked as an assistant editor on Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos and Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who. Since The Tillman Story, she has produced documentaries for “Frontline,” on PBS, and for ESPN.

Global Achievements LAURA LINNEY ’82 has added yet another award to her trophy case: a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy Series. She won the honor in January for her work on Showtime’s “The Big C,” in which she plays Cathy Jamison, a high school teacher and mother dealing with Stage 4 cancer. Linney cut her teeth in NMH’s theater program. She also has been nominated three times for an Academy Award (You Can Count on Me, Kinsey, and The Savages) and for a Tony (The Crucible, Sight Unseen, and Time Stands Still). And her most recent Globe wasn’t her first: in 2009 she won a Globe—and an Emmy, too—for her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries “John Adams.”

NMH Travellers

invites you

to discover new places with old friends

Swelly AN INVITATION TO PERFORM at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee, an MTVu “Woodie” award for best video, and a spot on Spin magazine’s list of “Top 20 songs of 2010”—it’s been a busy year for the Philadelphia-based hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang, which features Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege ’08 (left) and DJ/producer Xaphoon Jones (right). Chiddy Bang has been characterized as “kings of the basement party jam” and “the pied pipers for the freshman set.” Their first release, an eight-song collection called “The Preview,” is available on iTunes; they’re following up with another album titled “The Swelly Life.” Last fall they showed up on MTV as a PUSH (Play Until Someone Hears) Artist of the Week and in the “Who’s Next” column in Good* Fella Media.

by joining us on a European Christmas Market Tour

December 2–10, 2011 To book a place on this tour, or for more information, please contact the Office of Alumni and Parent Programs 413 - 498 - 3600

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NMH teachers lead discussions on the road. Clockwise from left: Bill Batty ’59 in California, Ted Thorton (right) in Houston, and Bob Cooley on the panel at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Faculty Head Out THE STUDIO MUSEUM in Harlem, New York, has special meaning for Bob Cooley’s former students. Every year, Cooley’s Harlem Renaissance class spends a semester discussing books such as Jazz by Toni Morrison and listening to the music of Duke Ellington and other jazz greats. The class peaks with a trip to Harlem and a tour of the Studio Museum. So it was fitting that Cooley, a longtime NMH English teacher, and a panel of his former students gathered at the Studio Museum in the fall to launch NMH’s new Faculty on the Road program, a series of off-campus lectures and discussions that bring the excitement of NMH classrooms to gatherings across the United States. In February, Ted Thornton, chair of the history and social science department, spoke to alumni in Houston, and a month later, English teacher Bill Batty ’59 drew

NMH Magazine

crowds in California, first at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles and then at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In New York, Cooley explained that the Harlem Renaissance class had been born out of his yearlong sabbatical in Egypt in 1997, when he started to think about the connections between the U.S. and its African heritage, as well as the ideas of racial pride and how artists from Harlem were formed by their roots. The alumni on the panel described the class as transformative. “It felt like a huge experiment, something brandnew for the school and for us,” said Luke Rosen ’98. “It was the first time I couldn’t stop reading and listening to music. It is still significant as a pivotal point in my life.” Faythallegra Lancaster-Coleman ’98, born and raised in Harlem, said Cooley’s

class taught her not only a new facet of the history of the place, but also new ideas about race in America. “I went from thinking about racism as people disliking other people to racism as part of a social structure,” she said. “There was a spirit there [in the class] that encouraged critical thinking.” “I find students to be empowered by conversation,” Cooley told the audience at the Studio Museum. “They are empowered by having serious racial discourse.” For Yaya DaCosta ’00, the class changed her perception of a place she thought she knew. “It was hard for me to imagine the Harlem I knew from walking down the street as being that beautiful,” she said. “Only in class, in Massachusetts, did I come to understand.” Find information about Faculty on the Road events at nmhschool.org/fotr.

New Trustees Join Board Mariah (Draper) Calagione ’89

Vinay Jayaram ’92

Calagione was a four-year student at NMH and earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Brown University in 1993. With her husband, Sam Calagione ’88, she opened the craft brewery Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, more than 15 years ago. Dogfish has since licensed Dogfish Head Ale House restauCALAGIONE rants in three locations in Virginia and Maryland, and is collaborating with Italian brewers and chef Mario Batali to open a brewpub in New York City. As Dogfish’s vice president, Calagione oversees marketing and communications. She is a vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Nature Conservancy of Delaware. She serves on the board of directors of Draper Holdings Business Trust, a family business that includes WBOC-TV16, Fox21, Delmarva Online, DCI Voice Solutions, Pintail Management, and Loblolly Farms. She is a founder and past president of the Rehoboth Beach Film Society and serves on the board of directors of the Greater Lewes Foundation in Delaware.

Jayaram was born in the United Kingdom, grew up in India, and attended NMH for his final two years of high school. He graduated from Duke University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, and was elected to the Board of Visitors at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering in 2002—the youngest member at JAYARAM the time. He worked for Morgan Stanley for 15 years: first in New York City; then in Hong Kong, where he served in various capacities, including as co-head of Asian capital markets; and in London, where he was managing director and head of capital markets for European financial institutions. In 2005, he served as executive producer of “Man Push Cart,” a film that premiered at the Venice Film Festival. He is an active sponsor of charitable causes and start-up companies.

Peter Guild ’64 Guild was a four-year NMH student from Milton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and math and went to work at IBM, marketing large mainframe computer systems. He bought an engine shop in Illinois and reinvented it as Pro-Motor Engineering (PME), which designed and built drag-racing and road-racing GUILD engines. Guild’s company has provided engines for NASCAR race teams, the National Hot Rod Association, the International Motor Sports Association GTP, the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA), and the American Powerboat Association, among others. PME engines have claimed 14 wins, 67 top-five finishes, and 125 top-10 finishes. Guild currently lives in North Carolina.

A QUESTION OF GIVING QUESTION: Is the charitable gift annuity the most popular lifeincome gift vehicle? ANSWER: Yes, this has been the case at NMH for many years. But that doesn’t mean it is the best life-income vehicle for everyone. Each of our life-income gift vehicles has its own pros and cons, depending on a donor’s philanthropic and personal objectives. Learn more at www.nmhschool.plannedgifts.org (click on “LifeStage Gift Planner”) or by contacting Marv Kelley ’60 or Jeff Leyden ’80, senior gift planning advisors, at mkelley@nmhschool.org, jleyden@nmhschool.org, or 413-498-3691.

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Books and Music in Brief

The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards By Jim Steinmeyer Jeremy P. Tarcher, Penguin, $26.95 Years before Americans knew alumnus Howard Thurston as one of the greatest magicians of all time—outdistancing even Harry Houdini in his fame—he was a runaway with a knack for pickpocketing and riding the rails. His transformation from an early ruffian to one of the most well known entertainers of his time is the subject of Jim Steinmeyer’s new book, The Last Greatest Magician in the World. It chronicles young Thurston’s meeting with a judge who had an interest in rehabilitating prisoners and whose family offered to send Thurston to Mount Hermon School for Boys. The school initially rejected Thurston as a student, and Steinmeyer attributes his enrollment, in 1887, directly to Reverend Dwight L. Moody, who relented when he learned that Thurston had converted to Christianity.

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Thurston spent his four years at the school struggling with academics, serving as a barber to other students for extra money, and learning to juggle heavy wooden Indian clubs. He also performed magic tricks during a Christmas dinner in 1890, but left the school a year later, two years before he was set to graduate. Through his work at fairgrounds and sideshows, Thurston transformed himself first into one of the country’s most renowned vaudeville stars, and then into a brand name among magicians, with a bigger and more successful show than Houdini’s. Thurston created a legacy among magic shows of the 1920s that continues to surface in the popular imagination of today.

Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World By Catherine E. McKinley ’85 Bloomsbury, $27 Part travelogue and part personal memoir, Indigo is the story of Catherine E. McKinley’s quest to understand the mysterious origins of one of the world’s most famous blue dyes—and, in turn, to better understand her own biracial heritage. McKinley’s search for indigo, which was funded by a J. William Fulbright fellowship, is nominally an investigation into the history of the precious dye. It is also a framework to intimately describe the customs, legends, and daily life in modern Ghana. Her journey then takes her north and east to Burkina Faso, Ivory

Coast, Nigeria, and Niger. As McKinley describes her quest for ancient fabrics, she writes about her greater understanding of the interwoven nature of life, death, blackness, and light. One of her companions notes that it is up to the author (and through her, the reader) to discover whether “indigo is a cloth or a lesson in life’s mysteries.”

Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care By Augustus A. White III ’53 M.D., with David Chanoff Harvard University Press, $27.95 Dr. Augustus A. White III does not mince words in describing what he sees as the medical community’s track record of providing disparate health care to patients of different races. “Unequal

READ THIS “Knitting Goodbye,” an essay by Sarah Zobel ’84 in Fits, Starts & Matters of the Heart: 28 True Stories of Love, Loss, and Everything in Between.

treatment is, in its way, the last frontier of racial prejudice, all the more fascinating because so much of it is a result of biases that function below the level of consciousness,” White writes in his introduction. To get to the heart of the racial health care disparities, White recounts his own experiences growing up in Memphis and then over his long medical career as an orthopedic surgeon. The book includes practical, straightforward advice for how patients and physicians can recognize and strive to avoid potential cultural pitfalls, such as understanding when referring to patients by their first names might imply disrespect.

Come By Craig K. Sandford Shekinah Music, $16 The best thing about “Come” is the silky, hypnotic tenor of Craig Sandford, the NMH performing arts intern who composed this debut CD of contemporary sacred music. There’s also his precise, elegant musicianship on piano and cello. Yet Sandford would probably say that what’s most important in these 12 songs is his expression of love for God. In the CD liner notes, he writes that his compositions, with both original and

scripture-based lyrics, “are not entertainment for the casual bystander, but a doorway to the union of Father and child.” Sandford began writing “Come” while living and studying in Jerusalem, and then recruited musical family members and friends to add backup vocals, instrumental accompaniment, and sound-engineering know-how. “Come” is a far cry from Sandford’s early musical ventures: He started out

playing the clarinet, creating sounds that, according to his website, his brother likened to a “sick cow.” Sandford moved on to piano and cello in high school, earned a degree in composition at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut, and worked as a choir director and composer. His intern duties at NMH include accompanying three choirs, teaching piano lessons, and teaching Performing Arts Foundations to freshmen.

buy the book

Lift Thine Eyes The amazing book arrived in yesterday’s mail—what a labor of love! I am so enjoying it, page by page and thought by thought. —Emily Zapata Doherty ’62 I’ve wanted something like this since graduating from Mount Hermon in 1967. Thrilled to finally have it. —Robert Mintzer ’67 Learn more or order your copy at nmhschool.org/ lift-thine-eyes.

Hard cover $50* Soft cover $35* *plus shipping and handling

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Survey Says Photograph courtesy of NMH Archives

Late last year, NMH surveyed alumni about their perceptions of the school. Here’s a sampling of the responses. Respondents who agreed with the statement “My experience at NMH changed my life.”

87 percent The top three “measures of performance” in choosing an independent school such as Northfield Mount Hermon: 1. Strong academic reputation 2. Highly capable faculty 3. A sense of community

Favorite NMH memory? • Choir • Intellectual challenges and being able to master them • The high expectations the school had of us—in academics, behavior, everything • Lying in the spring grass • Believe it or not, the work program • Walking to class in the morning fog • Getting up at 5 am to wash the udders of the cows • Encouragement for being smart • Getting really bad Chinese takeout after study hall • My English classes in which I learned to think and to write • Chicken patties on Thursdays for lunch • Camping out with my astronomy class so we could watch a rare meteor shower through high-powered telescopes • The hope that Mountain Day would be tomorrow

Watch videos about NMH traditions and current campus events at vimeo.com/channels/nmhschool

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Looking Fate in the Face NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON’S pocket for student scholarships is now a little deeper, thanks to a $1 million bequest from Edward Batchelder ’31, who died in November in Florida at the age of 98. Grants from the Edward S. Batchelder Endowed Scholarship Fund will support students who, in one way or another, have been cut off from their parents or guardians. Batchelder was an orphan himself, and he felt that his experience at the Mount Hermon School for Boys set him on a path in life that he otherwise would never have reached. He wished to serve young people “who are orphaned or living without financial support through abandonment or neglect,” including students who are living in foster homes or with relatives because their own parents are unable to properly care for them. The scholarship funds will be available to students starting in the 2011–2012 academic year. After Batchelder lost his parents to pneumonia when he was 3 years old, he was sent to live with a relative in Massachusetts. His sister, who had gone to live with a wealthier uncle when their parents died, gave him $300 to enroll at Mount Hermon, and the school agreed to pay the rest of the bill. Batchelder continued his education at Boston University and went on to careers in insurance and with the U.S. military as a management engineer. “When it came time to look fate in the face, I wanted to make sure my money did some good somewhere,” he said after he finalized plans for the scholarship fund. “Mount Hermon was a turning point.”

Parting Words Every year, NMH’s faculty intern program brings recent college graduates to campus to work as teachers, coaches, and, in effect, role models. In their first semester at NMH, these talented young women and men apprentice with experienced teachers; in their second, they lead their own classes. Janae Peters graduated from Kenyon College in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in English and served as an English intern for 2010–2011.

My Bailiwick BY JANAE PETERS SIX YEARS AGO, my grandfather—one of my loudest and proudest supporters—died. He believed—or made me believe— that I could assume my position as Queen of the Universe at any moment. He would always tell me, “Whatever you do, no matter why you’re doing it or how you’re doing it, do it the best. Whatever your profession, aim to be the best one out there.” This is part of the reason why, four years ago, I declared my English major, becoming the first person in Kenyon’s class of 2010 to do so. My English courses were the most challenging and stimulating and I wanted to master them. I wanted to be the best English major out there. As it turned out, that meant falling completely in love with Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry, connecting most with the lines, “What I do is me: for that I came. / I say more.” It meant investigating, interrogating, and attempting to redefine the function(s) of authorship in slave narratives. It has meant taking to heart Rainer Maria Rilke’s suggestion to young Franz Kappus in Letters to a Young Poet that we not only live all of the questions that life asks us, but that we love them, too. This year, so far, that has meant learning and living my teaching and my students and loving all of their questions. Recently, a friend posted the word “bailiwick” to my Facebook wall. (That gives you a sense of how “cool” my friends and I are—when we find a funky word, we send it along!)

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A bailiwick is the district within which a bailiff has jurisdiction. A bailiwick is also a person’s area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work. After letting the definition sink in a bit, I started to think about what “bailiwick” means for me here at Northfield Mount Hermon. When I think of my work here, my work in my life so far, I think about how fortunate I am to be creating a profession out of what I love. What I love is ultimately what I carry with me, what I bear, and what I bear witness to. Rilke writes that living our answers is “a question of experiencing everything,” which, to my mind, hints at the ups and downs of any profession. When I am doing, living, and professing my work, when I am loving what I am teaching and who I am teaching, even when it all feels overwhelmingly inescapable—it is because, as my good friend James Greenwood (NMH’s director of multicultural education) says, this is a lifestyle. What we do here at NMH—what I am learning to do here— is the stuff that lives are made of. It’s the stuff that teaches others how to make a life for themselves. In contemplating my bailiwick here, I find that my skill is at least threefold (as a teacher, coach, and dorm faculty), my knowledge is multiperspectival, my authority is in my knowledge and my skills, and most importantly, all of these things are in my heart. My work is to learn to use my life’s time to make it all happen, while maintaining my health and sanity. This includes making and finding time to relax. Sometimes, to check in with myself, I sit and write the question, “Janae, what big ideas and questions have you paused over lately?” I am grateful for the days that I can answer that question, and I am equally grateful for the days that I cannot, because that means that I was living the ideas and questions in my daily life. What I do is me. For that I came. For that I am here. Let us continue to say more together.

DEBBIE JAMESON ’67

Photograph byHarr Edward Judice Photog raph by y Stuar t Cahill

Giving Back When Noel Jameson ’40 celebrated his 70th reunion last June, his daughter Debbie Jameson ’67 had a special gift for him—an endowed scholarship in his name. “I wanted to honor my dad for encouraging my sister Linda ’70 and me to get a good education,” Debbie says. Debbie’s journey to Northfield started long before her birth. At the Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn, her grandfather served as sexton and her grandmother served as secretary to the pastor, S. Parkes Cadman, one of the most influential Congregational pastors of his day. Cadman knew the young child Noel was a voracious reader, and suggested that Mount Hermon would be a good match for him. The family scrimped, and with the help of financial aid, sent Noel to Mount Hermon for four years. About 20 years later, Noel and his family lived in Greenfield, and he often took them on Sunday afternoon drives to the Mount Hermon campus he loved and to the Northfield campus across the river. The beauty of Northfield entranced Debbie, and when she was ready to enter high school, Noel suggested she apply. “It was the best place I knew for education for young ladies,” Noel recalls.

Debbie entered Northfield as a sophomore, at first concerned that she might not be smart enough to succeed. She quickly adapted and thrived. Her sister followed three years later. “I appreciated that women’s education was so valued,” says Debbie, who went on to the University of Pennsylvania and eventually became a nurse and a medical librarian. Years later Debbie had a son, Sam Winkler ’06, who visited campus with her over the years, even went to her reunions. It was always Debbie’s dream that he go to NMH, but she tried not to push. In the end, he needed no persuading, and Sam spent three years on his mother’s campus and one on his grandfather’s. Financial aid was an important part of the Jamesons’ experience at NMH, so Debbie decided to endow a scholarship through a charitable remainder unitrust. Her goal was not only to recognize her father’s foresight in wanting the best education for his daughters, but also to ensure that other students have the same opportunity in the future. “It was a complete surprise and just so amazing,” says Noel of the scholarship, which will ensure that the Jameson name remains connected to NMH in perpetuity. “It’s a wonderful thing that Debbie has done.”

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Nonprofit Org. US Postage PAID Northfield Mount Hermon School

One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354

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"Gray's Beach Sunset," oil on panel, by Bill Roberts, visual arts faculty member.

Calendar Commencement may 29

Reunion june 9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12

Family Days

september 30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;october 1

Homecoming

d.l. moody society luncheon athletic hall of fame induction & dinner october 29

121st Bemis-Forslund Pie Race november 16

Christmas Vespers december 4

Vespers in NYC december 16

FOR MORE INFORMATION about alumni and parent events, contact the advancement office at 413-498-3600 or email events@nmhschool.org. Find updates and other school information at www.nmhschool.org. To reach the switchboard, call 413-498-3000.